each other on the subject of boxing and Captain Smit would occasionally belittle a suggestion from Geel Piet to one of the boxers, but you could see that he respected Geel Piet’s judgement and it was only to show who was the boss of the boxing squad. In the months which followed my win against Killer Kroon I continued to enter the ring against bigger, stronger and older opponents, yet had never lost a fight. Captain Smit saw in me the consummate skill Geel Piet had as a coach and secretly admired him for it.
I knew this because Bokkie de Beer said Captain Smit had told his pa that I would be the South African Champion one day, ‘… because, man, he is getting the right coaching from the very beginning.’
Under the guise of learning how to read and write, Geel Piet would stare into a school book and dictate the prisoners’ letters to me. His facility for remembering names and addresses was quite remarkable. He claimed it was easy for him, he could remember the names of the horses and their odds for every Johannesburg maiden handicap since 1918.
We had the new system up and running well before VE day and while it wasn’t quite as foolproof or as convenient as the piano stool, it worked well enough. Geel Piet was too old a lag not to maintain absolute caution and he would never let me get careless or less mindful of the risks involved. For instance, on rainy days I would bring nothing to the prison as the idea of my taking the outside path in the rain to the warders’ mess rather than through the interior passage would seem both silly and, to an alert warder like Borman, suspicious. Nor would the drops be made every day or on the same days. Geel Piet was smart enough to know that little boys are not consistent and so he created this random pattern for my drops even allowing that on some dry days I would take the interior passage to the mess as well. While the system was clumsy and not as convenient as the old one, it was very fortunate that Doc was smart enough to initiate it some time before he left.
One morning, shortly after he had been promoted to lieutenant, Borman wandered into the hall while we were practising. This was simply not done. The Kommandant’s orders were that we should not be disturbed during our morning session, two geniuses at work, so to speak. Lieutenant Borman walked over to us, his boots making a hollow sound on the sprung floor. I continued to play until his foot steps ceased as he came to a halt just behind me.
‘Good morning, Lieutenant Borman,’ we both said together.
‘Morning,’ Borman said in a superior and disinterested way. He was carrying a cane not unlike the one Mevrou had carried and with it he tapped the leg of the piano stool. ‘Stan’ up, man’ he said to me. I rose, and he bent down on his knees and with his index finger and thumb stretched he measured the width of the seat. ‘A bit deep, hey, maybe something lives inside this seat?’ He got down on all fours and put his head under the seat. ‘Maybe a false bottom, hey?’ He tapped the bottom of the piano stool which gave off a hollow sound. ‘Very inter-res-ting, very clever too.’ Doc rose from his stool, inserted the key into my stool and raised the lid. Lieutenant Borman started to rise. Halfway up he could see that the seat was filled with sheets of music. Remaining in a crouched position he stared at Doc and me for what seemed like a long time. ‘You think this is funny, hey? You think this is playing a funny joke on a person?’
‘No, Lieutenant,’ Doc said, his voice surprisingly even. ‘I think only you should ask before you look. Inside lives only Klavier Meister Chopin.’ He opened the lid of his own stool, ‘And here lives also Herr Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and Bach and maybe are visiting also some others, perhaps Haydn, Liszt and Tchaikovsky, but not Strauss, definitely not Strauss. Like you, my dear Lieutenant, Strauss is not welcome when I am teaching.’
Lieutenant Borman rose to his full height. He was a big man with a roll of gut just beginning to spill over his belt, and was used to looking down at people, but Doc’s six foot seven left him five inches short as the two men stared at each other. The lieutenant was the first to drop his eyes from the gaze of Doc’s incredibly steady blue eyes. He laid the cane on top of the Steinway and hitched his pants up. ‘You think I don’t blerrie know things is going on? You think I’m a blerrie fool or something, hey? I got time, I got plenty of time, you hear?’ He picked up the cane then brought it up fast and down hard against the open lid of my piano stool, the blow knocking the lid back into place. The sound of the cane against the leather top echoed through the hall. He turned slowly to face Doc again, pointed the cane at Doc so that it touched him lightly on the breast bone as though it were a rapier. ‘Next time you try to be cheeky you come off secon’ bes’. I’m telling you now, you kraut bastard, I’m finish an’ klaar with you both!’ He turned and stormed out, his heavy military boots crashing and echoing through the empty hall.
‘Phew!’ I sighed as I closed the lid of Doc’s piano stool and sat down weakly on my own. Doc also sat down, reached over to the Chopin Nocturne No. 5 in F sharp major on the Steinway music rack and commenced to fan himself with it. He was silent for a while, seemingly lost in thought, then said softly, ‘Soon come the hills and the mountains.’
FIFTEEN
We were reasonably safe the month after the piano stool incident as the inspector of prisons was due to arrive and Lieutenant Borman had the job of seeing that the place was spick and span, with fresh whitewash everywhere you looked. Much to Doc’s annoyance even the stones bordering his cactus garden were whitewashed. He was prepared to accept whisky bottles outlining his paths but painting real stones seemed to him an insult against nature. Fresh gravel was brought into the inner courtyard together with several loads of finely crushed iron pyrites and mica with which a large letter ‘B’ was formed in the centre. The darker colour and sheen from the mica and pyrites mix made the letter shimmer against the almost white gravel. The ‘B’ of course stood for Barberton. This was the lieutenant’s idea and he spent hours supervising the old lags sweeping and raking, until it was perfect. I must hand it to him, it did look very nice. Gert said the Kommandant was particularly pleased and Borman was up to his eyeballs in his good books. The prison corridors smelt of polish and the cells of Jeyes Fluid disinfectant. Window ledges were painted prison blue and everywhere you went smelt of new paint. But it was done early so the smell would have gone by the time the brigadier arrived. New canvas uniforms were issued to the old lags to be worn only during the visit. This was because they were doing all the painting and cleaning and their old patched and worn uniforms had paint on them and would give the game away. The Kommandant wanted the brigadier to think that everything was normal and that he could have popped in any old time and found things just the same. After the inspection, the lags handed back their new uniforms and wore their old patched and worn clothes until they finally fell apart.
Captain Smit had arranged the usual boxing exhibition and for weeks the Kommandant spent most of his mornings, as he did before every inspection, practising his pistol shooting on the pistol range behind the warders’ mess.
The rapidly approaching VE day was a matter of concern to the Kommandant. If it arrived before the brigadier’s visit then the truly cultural part of the programme would disappear with the release of Doc. He had tried to elicit a promise from Doc that, should this occur, he would return to the prison and play for the inspector. But Doc had not spent over four years in prison for nothing and he had learned the rules of prison life where everything is in return for something else. The
On Sundays, being God’s day, the prisoners did not go out in work gangs. Instead they were locked in their cells and fifty at a time were allowed in the exercise pen, a high-walled enclosure of brick and cement about the size of two tennis courts. This was done tribe by tribe, each tribal group allotted ninety minutes. First the Zulus, followed by the Swazis, then the Ndebele, Sotho and Tsonga. The Boers had long understood the antipathy each tribe has for the other, and by keeping the tribes separated in prison they maintained the traditional tensions between them. This was thought to lessen the chances of a mass uprising or a prison strike.
Doc told me how each Sunday he would take a position in the guard tower overlooking the exercise pen to listen to them. Each tribe would use much of the ninety minutes allotted to them singing together, and he soon learned which tribal song each tribe liked best. He had written out the music for it, and then he had composed a piano concerto which represented, in melody terms, each of these songs. Doc said that he had never heard such
